FullReads

So they stream in and out, and in the kitchen a circle of matrons hold a Vehmgericht over the mother.

“She’s an unfeelin’ brute, even if she iz yer arf sister, Mrs. Waters,” says a fat matron, “to let that pretty, hinnocent hangel die without sein’ ‘er, not to speak o’ burying’. I ‘ave no patience with sich ways!”

The roll of wheels and the jingle of tyres cuts short her speech, and the knocker bangs dully. Heads crane out in every direction, and one of the children opens the door, and the woman steps in.

In her pink gown! when everyone knows that not to pawn your bed or the washings-tubs, or anything available, to get a black skirt or crape bonnet, or at least a straw with bugles, is the greatest breach of propriety known to the poor, the greatest sticklers for mourning etiquette outside a German court. The half-sister is a quiet woman with smoothly-parted hair and tender eyes, and a strong likeness to her about the underhung chin. She goes forward and leads her to the room; the women fall back and talk in whispers.

“W’y didn’t you send?” she asks fiercely, turning from the coffin.

“We wrote Friday, an’ then, when you didn’t come, we wrote Sunday. Jim couldn’t go, an’ I never left ‘er a minute,
an’ Tiny an’ little Jim ‘ad the measles, an’ Katie ‘ad to mind ’em; but a mate o’ Jim’s went to the ‘Buckin’am’ on Monday mornin’ an’ told ‘im, an’ then we sent a tellygram, an, we couldn’t do more, not if she were our own.”

There is a settled resignation in her voice; she has repeated it so often.

“‘E kep’ the letters an’ ‘e never told me, an’ I only found the tellygram this mornin’ by accidin’. When’s she to be buried?”

“At three o’clock,”–with a puzzled look at the set face.

“Leave me along of ‘er then; go on!”–roughly.

The woman goes out, closes the door, and listens. Not a sound comes from the room, not one, not a sob nor cry. The women listen in silence when she tells them; they are used to the fierce passions of humanity, and jealousy is common amongst their men. After a while one of the children says, with an awe-struck face, “Ma, she’s singin’.” They go to the door and listen; she is crooning a nonsense song she used to sing to her when she was quite a baby, and the listening women pale, but fear to go in. For a long hour they hear her talking and singing to it; then the man comes to screw down the lid, and they find her on the sofa with the dead child on her lap, its feet, in their white cotton socks, sticking out like the legs of a great wax doll.

She lets them take it from her without a word, and watches them place it amongst the white frills, and lets them lead her out of the room. She sits bolt upright in the kitchen, with the same odd smile upon her lips and her hands hanging straight down. They go without her. When they return she is still sitting with her hands hanging, as if she has never stirred.

“Mother, w’y did they plant Susie in the ground? Mother, carn’t you answer; will she grow?” queries one of the children, and something in the question rouses her. She starts up with a cry and a wild glare, and stares about as if in search of something–stands trembling in every limb, with the ugly hush on her face and the purple triangle on her forehead, and the pulse beating in her throat. The children cower away from her, and the sister watches her with frightened, pitying eyes.